According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), small businesses with under $5 million in revenue should invest seven to eight percent of their revenue into marketing. This money should go toward campaigns that raise awareness of your brand and appeal to new customers looking for your product or service. In this marketing guide for small business owners, we’ll focus on how to increase your company’s exposure.
Marketing is fundamental to small business success. It’s a high-ranking need for every business because it:
As you might guess from the above reasons why marketing matters, marketing is somewhat of an abstract, flexible art. Great marketing ideas for small businesses can vary widely, as there truly isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution that works for every company. What’s best for you may take a bit of trial and error, but at the end of that process, you’ll know which methods give you the best return on investment (ROI) for every dollar spent. The below is a small sampling of the best marketing strategies for small businesses that can help boost your bottom line.
Getting your business out there increases brand recognition and customer engagement while strengthening your reputation. Combined, all these factors can put your company in a position to make more sales. You can spread awareness of your business through some combination of the marketing approaches below:
Cross-marketing entails partnering with other businesses for initiatives that promote you both. For an example of this strategy’s effectiveness, think back to your childhood. When your parents took you to the fast-food drive-thru and you got a toy with your kids’ meal, that wasn’t just corporate generosity. It was a promotion for a new movie or season of TV. Surely, that movie or series was also advertising that its toys were available at fast-food chains.
You don’t have to be a food industry giant to cross-market. Arrange partnerships with small businesses in your industry or area to send dual-branded postcards to both your mailing lists. Start a loyalty program in which completed punch cards enable customer freebies at a business beyond your four walls or your e-commerce page. Set up a small station in another small business’s storefront or vice versa.
In all these examples, you’ll get unique access to your partner business’s customer base that you might otherwise not have access to. The other business will also get the same from you. Cross-marketing is a win-win.
It’s now somewhat common to hear the term “ direct marketing” used in place of “mail marketing,” but the latter is a subtype of the former. Any type of marketing in which you reach out directly to potential or current customers is direct marketing. Channels through which you can directly market include:
Digital marketing is an extremely broad umbrella term. It encompasses any marketing efforts made via the internet or text messages. Email, social media, your website, your blog, your online reviews, and your business listing pages are all part of your digital marketing approach.
There are numerous tips you should follow for successful digital marketing. These tips include focusing on inclusivity and developing highly targeted audiences both locally and across the internet. Content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are also important. No matter which digital marketing approach you take, you should prioritize the use of Google ® My Business, chatbots, and omnichannel communications.
In-store marketing engages customers who are actually inside your store. Perhaps these customers found you through your previous marketing efforts – now, it’s time to follow through on that all.
Effective in-store marketing strategies can be as simple as actually greeting your customers and offering your help when they walk through your doors. Other ideas, such as offering certain discounts exclusively in-store, may take more planning. Hosting in-store events is an option too, and its complexity can be worth it to incentivize visits from customers who might not otherwise be aware of your business.
Where global marketing methods such as digital marketing are often broad, local marketing is targeted solely at the customers who are most likely to respond. It can involve one-time actions such as creating a Google My Business ® listing and social media pages. It can also be a tad more complex, with a focus on local SEO, customer loyalty programs, and cross-promotion.
Unique to local marketing is that it also gives you the chance to position yourself as a community leader. Through charitable efforts and local media appearances, you can show that you truly care about your neighbors. Often, this community care also makes the people around you more likely to buy from you, which is a bonus.
When you’re introducing a new product, marketing can look a bit different. New product marketing might involve additional competitor research, audience identification and development, and the refinement of your unique value proposition. It also requires attention to traits specific to your product, such as its potential lifecycle and the story of why you created it.
Though not necessarily an explicit form of marketing, market expansion does build your customer base and tell your story to new consumers. It involves you selling your current products in new markets, be that geographical areas or consumer populations you haven’t previously reached. You’re best off saving market expansion as a strategy until you’ve reached peak performance in your current market.
Across all types of marketing, your goal is to show consumers why you, not one of your competitors, is best suited to meet their needs. Niche marketing takes this logic a step further and narrows your target audience to solely the consumers most likely to buy what you sell.
In niche marketing, you’ll find the overlap between your unique strengths and your customers’ emerging needs. You’ll also need to maintain a level of expertise and customer communication rare among your competitors. This way, you offer both a product or service and an experience unavailable elsewhere.
Many guides to small business marketing focus on targeting individuals rather than businesses. Although you can indeed apply individual marketing tactics to businesses, that’s only true to an extent. Business-to-business (B2B) marketing principles are a better source of guidance here, and they sometimes look quite different from business-to-consumer (B2C) tactics.
B2B marketing campaigns fare better if they’re built from easily navigable small business websites across many integratable channels. Finding your niche, setting up a referral program, automating your lead generation process, and incorporating influencers can help. So too can word-of-mouth marketing, as business owners with similar needs often look to one another for advice. If working with you is among that advice, you can expect more sales.
No matter which of the above marketing strategies or types you pursue, you’ll likely need business marketing apps to make your processes efficient. The types of apps you should use include team communication tools, project management software, email marketing platforms, and social media management systems. You can probably get a sense of what these apps do based on their names.
Customer relationship management (CRM) and visual apps are also necessary and demand a bit more explanation. CRM apps enable you to store and access customer data during sales and customer service interactions for more meaningful conversations. In some cases, this data will come from your customers’ responses to your marketing initiatives.
Visual apps allow you to create, edit, and share photos, videos, flyers, ads, and other graphics key to marketing campaigns. They help you do more than just design something that is unengaging in your slideshow platform or the photo editors that come with your computer. That’s important, as you’ll need high-quality, eye-catching images to succeed in any marketing approach.
No matter which apps you use for your small business marketing, one thing is clear: If you couple your apps with the marketing tips above, you’ll likely have a much easier time spreading awareness and making sales.
Marketing doesn’t just mean planning and executing – it also means learning and fine-tuning as you go. If you’re ready to start connecting with more customers, consider which of the above strategies, methodologies, and apps can help you meet your new goals as you grow. As questions arise during this exciting time for your company, turn to the SmartBiz® Learning Center to explore more marketing and small business resources to help support your growth.